A new study has analyzed the difference between day hospital and inpatient stay in depression. Depending on the severity of depression, patients may be treated at different levels of care with psychotherapy and/or antidepressant medication. While several previous studies compared the efficacy of different levels of care for psychotherapy of personality disorders, sufficient data is lacking for the comparison of day-clinic and inpatient psychotherapy for depression. The current pilot study evaluates the feasibility of randomization in a routine hospital setting and compares preliminary efficacy for day-clinic and inpatient psychotherapy for depression.

A new study has analyzed the long-term effects of psychotherapy on borderline personality disorder. Authors report the effect of DBT compared to TAU on inpatient service use, and a follow-up 6 months after the end of treatment.

A new study has addressed the relationship between personality and heart attacks. Distressed (type D) personality (TDP), characterized by high negative affectivity (NA) and social inhibition (SI), along with depression, anxiety and other negative affects (such as demoralization, hopelessness, pessimism and rumination) have been implicated as potential risk factors for coronary artery disease. While some evidence suggests that the NA dimension of TDP overlaps at least partially with depression, other studies underline how 'TDP refers to a chronic, more covert form of distress that is distinct from depression'.

Scientists have the first evidence for a shockless treatment for atrial fibrillation. For the current study, the researchers devised a method of shockless defibrillation. They used optogenetics to genetically insert depolarising ion channels into the heart that can be activated by light.

Through an innovative approach using a large psychometric and brain imaging database, researchers have demonstrated that the location of language areas in the brain is independent of left- or right-handedness, except for a very small proportion of left-handed individuals whose right hemisphere is dominant for both manual work and language.

A new study updates the number of human genes to 19,000; 1,700 fewer than the genes in the most recent annotation, and well below the initial estimations of 100,000 genes. The work concludes that almost all of these genes have ancestors prior to the appearance of primates 50 million years ago.